The complexity of system designs is increasing exponentially. This is particularly a concern for integrated circuit manufacturers such as Texas Instruments Incorporated. The time to market is more and more critical for success. It is believed that collaboration with customers and suppliers is the key to faster, easier, cheaper and more accurate interactions.
The collaboration can be improved by allowing the customers and suppliers (partners) to use their compute resources. The problem with that is having the data leaving the owner for validating, simulation, layout, etc.
It is therefore an object of the present invention for manufacturer's such as Texas Instruments Incorporated to give access to partners such as sub-contractors, customers and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) vendors to the manufacturer's design systems computing environment without compromising Intellectual Property.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention access from partner's sub-contractors, customers and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) vendors to a manufacturer's (owner's) such as Texas instruments Incorporated design systems computing environment without compromising Intellectual Property is provided by a full suite of web-based services from design to production is provided by a highly secure network including a VPN tunnel between workstations to establish a secure encrypted tunnel end to end wherein each partner is identified with a different VPN group/password.
In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention a method of enabling collaboration by owners of a collaborative network with partners such as sub-contractors, customers and/or Electronic Design Automation (EDA) vendors without compromising Intellectual Property is provided herein by providing by the owner a highly secure common resource computing environment with services from design to production wherein data input and output remains on the common resource. The highly secure resource is provided by multiple layers of security to engagement boxes with the computing environment where the partners can work simultaneously in multiple teams, run simulation tests, emulate software problems and share intellectual property in a secure zone with just the remote display going back to the engagement box and therefore to the partner outside the owner.
While executing outsourcing projects in design zones described above and in co-pending application Ser. No. 10/615,263 filed on Jul. 8, 2003 and in European patent application serial no. 03291079.6 filed May 2, 2003 entitled “Method and System for Access to Development Environment of Another”, it is required to provide access to EDA licenses managed by FLEXLM manager running on license servers inside design zone owner's Intranet. These applications are incorporated herein by reference. This requires opening all TCP inbound connections inside the Intranet for ports greater than 1023 from all the hosts in contractor zone on which EDA applications are run. This is considered very insecure. In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention a license proxy software is provided that will act as a relay agent and route all the connections from contractor zone into the Intranet.